Help end FGM and child marriage!

type:

Donation, Protest

by:

Deniz Zehra Tavli

Can you imagine being forced to marry a man old enough to be your grandfather? Maria can.

She’s one of thousands of girls as young as 11 who are being denied their basic human rights. They are being robbed of an education. They aren’t getting a say in what happens to their bodies. And they’ve had enough. They’re starting a revolution against child marriage. But it will fail without your support.

Burkina Faso has a child marriage prevalence rate of 52%. On average, almost one out of two girls in Burkina will be married before the age of 18. The rates of child marriage vary from one region to another, and are as high as 86% in the Sahel region and 76% in the East region.

Maria ran away from her husband and is living with her family again – but thousands of young girls just like her are at risk. Will you join their revolution and help end child marriage once and for all?

Almost everything you eat could be controlled by a single mega-corporation, if Bayer gets its way and buys Monsanto.

Once the deal goes ahead it could spell disaster for our food supply and farmers, ushering in a new era of sterile crops soaked in dangerous pesticides. If the deal is successful, it'll make the new corporation the biggest seed maker and pesticide company in the world - and it will have almost total control of the most important aspects of our food supply.

At the centre of Bayer and Monsanto's corporate agribusiness model is the indiscriminate, widespread use of pesticides linked to the massive global bee die-off.

Bayer depends on people to buy its medicine. And Bayer’s shareholders know we simply wouldn't trust the company anymore once it’s joined with Monsanto - its shares have already fallen a massive 12% since the takeover was announced. All of this is making Bayer’s shareholders nervous. If enough pressure is piled on now, the shares could fall even further and mobilise investors to demand Bayer pulls out of the deal.

Monsanto rejected the first offer from Bayer, but the negotiations are far from over. Once a merger like this goes through, Bayer and Monsanto will be even harder to stop - Act now to block the creation of this massive corporate food supply controler and bee-killer! Tell Bayer to stop its mega-merger with Monsanto!

Erol Önderoglu was placed in pre-trial detention by an Istanbul court on June 20, 2016, along with the journalist Ahmet Nesin and the human rights defender Sebnem Korur Fincanci. The three intellectuals are charged with “terrorist propaganda” for taking part in a campaign of solidarity with the Kurdish daily Özgür Gündem.

Erol Önderoglu is being prosecuted on the basis of three articles published by Özgür Gündem In May 2016 about power struggles within the various Turkish security forces and about the ongoing operations against Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) rebels in southeastern Anatolia.

Erol Önderoglu has fought tirelessly to defend persecuted journalists for the past 20 years. He is the representative in Turkey for Reporters without Borders since 1996, a leader in this field and highly valued for his honesty and integrity.

Handcuffed and jailed after a closed hearing, Erol Önderoglu is today the victim of the persecutions he always denounced. It’s now our turn to fight for him.

Help Reporters without Borders, sign their petition and call on the Turkish authorities to immediately and unconditionally release Erol Önderoglu, Ahmet Nesin and Sebnem Korur Fincanci. All charges brought against them and 34 other participants in the solidarity campaign with Özgür Gündem should immediately be dropped!

Agriculture is crucial to Ethiopia’s food security and the livelihoods of nearly 85% of its people.

Accelerating agricultural growth is a critical national priority: The country’s government has set ambitious targets for the agricultural sector to increase productivity, accelerate commercialization, and improve the livelihoods of Ethiopia’s smallholder farmers. Achieving the GTP targets requires coordinated action and innovation among key stakeholders.

Synergos works with the Ethiopian Agricultural Transformation Agency (ATA) and others to strengthen their partnerships, collaboratively identify systemic bottlenecks, and jointly develop solutions that promote food security and improve the lives and livelihoods of small-scale farmers. Based on geographic concentrations of producers, agribusinesses, and institutions engaged in the same agricultural sub-sector, the initiative catalyzes growth by harnessing efforts among an interconnected web of actors, from the federal to regional to local levels. Such collaboration allows small-scale farmers and agribusinesses to better realize higher productivity, and more market-oriented and higher value-added production.

Synergos is a non-profit organization which aims to reduce global poverty through “inclusive partnerships” that bring together government, business, civil society and local communities.

Support Synergos and their important work for small-scale farmers in Ethiopia by donating and/or spreading their news through your channels!

In 2016 around 60 million people will be affected by El Niño in East and Southern Africa, the Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean, according to the UN’s humanitarian agency. The effects of El Niño have combined with existing droughts to make this year the hardest for some of the world’s most vulnerable people.

In the worst affected countries, people go to bed with empty stomachs work their land or go to school with the gnawing pain of hunger; they walk or cycle for miles to try to find food. Pastoralists and small scale farmers are facing the same problems everywhere; their crops are failing and their animals are dying. Food insecurity is forcing people to cut down on the quantity and variety of the food that they eat, leading to malnutrition.

Oxfam is helping families to become more resilient to the devastating effects of climate change and El Niño, but more needs to be done. Support Oxfam and call on world leaders to release the cash urgently needed to save lives now and in the future!

Glyphosate is an active substance used in several different herbicides. It is the main substance in a herbicide known as “Round Up“ produced by the controversial multinational agrochemical corporation Monsanto. Where “Round Up” is used, nothing grows anymore. This is why Monsanto also sells genetically modified glyphosate-resistent plants to US-farmers.

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has reached a different conclusion about the negative health effects of glyphosate. But as long as there is scientific uncertainty regarding the health effects of glyphosate, the European Commission has a legal responsibility to protect consumers from potential exposure to harm. Human health cannot be put at risk. Therefore, the Commission has no basis for re-approving glyphosate.

foodwatch is an independent, non-profit organisation that exposes food-industry practices that are not in the interests of consumers - such as the glyphosate case. foodwatch fights for the right of consumers to know exactly what they are buying and to enjoy good food that is healthy and uncontaminated. The NGO was founded in 2002 in Germany by former Greenpeace director Thilo Bode and has offices in Berlin, Amsterdam and Paris.

The food industry, lobbyists and politicians control what will end up on our plates and what we are allowed to know about our food. This has to stop! Support foodwatch as a donor and help them to stop shady lobbying practices of the food industry and fight for consumer rights!

British Museum has a blockbuster exhibition this summer. Sunken Cities sponsored by BP – a company that profits from climate change and is responsible for environmental disasters such as the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

For the museum, it’s the launch of their biggest event of the year. But in the eyes of BP, whose logo appears all over the show, it’s an exquisite opportunity to clean up its image and distract from the polluting realities of its business. BP’s cash contributes less than 1% of the British Museum’s annual income, but the benefits it can glean from cosying up to the UK’s most popular cultural attraction can be priceless.

Sponsorship of art and cultural institutions is being used by oil companies like BP for the sole purpose of furthering their business interests. A series of recent Freedom of Information requests reported by the grassroots coalition Art, Not Oilshow how BP strategically uses these institutions to lobby government officials and get direct access to decision makers.

The future of the sponsorship deal between the British Museum and BP is being decided now. Sign the petition to the British Museum asking them to drop BP as a sponsor and contribute to the independance of art!

Language loss is not new—languages have fallen out of use since ancient times. However, languages are disappearing today at an alarming rate. Of the nearly 7,000 languages in the world today, some 3,000 (43%) are endangered; many others will make their way into this catalogue in the near future.Experts have predictedthat in the worst-case scenario 90% of all languages will cease to be spoken within 100 years.

We should all be concerned over the crisis of language loss, for compelling reason:

Languages are treasure houses of information on literature, history, philosophy, and art. Their stories, ideas, and words help us make sense of our lives and the world around us.Specific knowledge is often held by the smaller speech communities of the world—knowledge of medicinal plants and cures, identification of plants and animals yet unknown scientifically. The loss of such knowledge could have devastating consequences for humanity.

The right for language is a human right. Language loss is often not voluntary; it frequently involves violations of human rights, with oppression or repression of speakers of minority languages. It is a matter of injustice when people are forced to give up their languages by repressive regimes or prejudiced dominant societies.

For these alarming reasons The Endangered Languages Project puts technology at the service of the organizations and individuals working to confront the language endangerment by documenting, preserving and teaching them. Through this website, users can not only access the most up to date and comprehensive information on endangered languages as well as samples being provided by partners, but also play an active role in putting their languages online by submitting information or samples in the form of text, audio or video files.

Share, like, follow, contribute and spread contents and links of The Endangered Languages Project and help raising awareness for this necessary and more than important project!

For decades fossil fuel companies have knowingly contributed to runaway climate change, ravaged local communities, and obstructed the development of renewables - all to pad their pockets with billions in profits.

In just a few days, thousands of shareholders will vote on whether to make these oil giants disclose their lobbying, do better reporting, and prove their business model in a low-carbon world.

Online activism group SumOfUs teamed up with a powerful coalition with Asset Owners Disclosure Project and ShareAction to use shareholder and investor pressure to make Chevron and Exxon diversify away from oil and gas.

This petition is crucial for inhabitants of the US, the UK, Canada or Australia who probably contributed to a mutual fund, superannuation fund, or pension fund -- like Vanguard, Canada Pension Plan or AustralianSuper.

The action group established an online voting so that one can tell his or her pension or superannuation fund to support four different resolutions which are all aimed at diversifying oil companies away from fossil fuels.

Vote your pension and make these shareholder resolutions passed at Exxon and Chevron’s AGMs and help pushing big oil into the low-carbon future!

The iconic Maasai of Kenya and Tanzania have been fighting for decades to survive and defend their environment. Lately, they're losing the battle: besieged by shady poachers, billionaires who want to buy up their traditional lands for safari lodges, and sketchy government officials.

For decades the Maasai have struggled to hang on to their ancestral lands as profit-hungry tourism companies and government officials evict, sell off, and repurpose the countryside that has sustained them for generations. Tourism brings billions into the Kenyan economy but the Maasai - the land’s rightful owners - barely see a drop!

Now a Maasai community in Kenya has had an idea to fight back and reclaim their own land by forming a new kind of reserve, run by themselves. This will not only ensure their habitat and the customs of their ancestors but also a new wildlife passage will be created.For this project, lead by community members and local NGOs, the tribe needs funds fast to get the reserve up and running, take down fences, train young people, and pay them to be wildlife patrollers.

Support the Maasai with a donation and help them reclaiming their lands!